


scarlet

by onceuponaplot



Series: 30 Day Writing Challenge - November 2014 [16]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Dorms, Gen, Laundry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 17:10:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2629694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponaplot/pseuds/onceuponaplot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Writing Challenge Day 16/30</p>
<p>Everything is pink. His shirts, his boxers, his socks. Hell, even Bucky’s towel is pink now, and it makes no sense. He’s still staring as his wet clothes when someone stomps into the room and tosses their laundry onto the floor with a huff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	scarlet

_Everything_ is pink. His shirts, his boxers, his socks. Hell, even Bucky’s _towel_ is pink now, and it makes no sense.

He’s still staring as his wet clothes when someone stomps into the room and tosses their laundry onto the floor with a huff. Bucky looks over his shoulder briefly, sees a brown-haired girl tossing clothes into a washer a little farther down.

She glances up at him a moment later, frowns until she catches sight of Bucky’s newly-pink sweatshirt dripping water on the floor. Bucky watches her grin and then try to hide it by ducking her head enough that her hair obscures her face.

It’s not worth calling her out so instead Bucky sighs down at his sweatshirt and wonders what went wrong.

“I didn’t put any colors in the wash,” Bucky mutters to himself. He’d done everything the way his ma taught him – separating the clothes by color, a splash of bleach with the lights – and now it’s all pink. Bucky doesn’t even _own_ anything red enough to cause this.

“Someone might’ve left something in there by accident. Did you check before you put your stuff in?”

Bucky jolts, glances over at the girl again. Her hamper is empty, laundry spinning around in the washer she stands by. She points at the sweatshirt. “If you didn’t put something in, then it must’ve already been there,” she explains. “Did you check to make sure no one had left anything before you put your clothes in?”

Bucky’s shoulders sag and he buries his face in the damp sweatshirt. “Shit,” he groans. Then he tosses the sweatshirt down into his laundry basket. He empties the rest of the washer too, and he’s gotten almost everything out before his finds it.

‘It’ is a scarf that is so red Bucky can’t think to call it anything other than scarlet.

Bucky sighs, tosses the thing into his basket – the damage is done now, and he may as well get a new scarf out of the deal – and starts lugging it all over to the row of dryers on the other side of the room.

The girl is nowhere in sight, her hamper tucked into the space between the wall and the last washer, and Bucky feels disappointed that he can’t thank her for her help as he starts to load his laundry into one of the machines and swipes his ID to start the cycle.

Bucky scowls briefly at the dryer and the occasional flashes of red as the scarf is tumbled around with the rest of his things.

No wonder his ma always got frustrated on the weeks they didn’t help her with the wash.

Bucky sets an alarm on his phone to alert him five minutes before his dryer finishes its cycle and after a moment’s deliberation opens up his note application.

With care he types in:

laundry – 1  
bucky – 0


End file.
